Fixed State
by midnightneverland
Summary: At twenty-five, Max has spent the majority of her adult life fleeting from one place to another. She knows she's chasing after dreams and she lets herself get wrapped in his awkward charm just for the sake of the distraction. And now, two months into this chaos, she still has no idea of what she's doing. They are in a fixed state, unyielding. Something has to give.
_We are in a fixed state, unyielding. Something has to give._

Max doesn't know how long she can keep doing this— her lips pressed to Warren's collarbone as his nails drag down her back, pulling her close to him. He presses kisses down her jawline and she leans back, forcing him to move closer, press harder. Her eyes dart away from his gaze; her lips muffle his sighs. She doesn't know how long it will take before they crash, before he mutters the words that will push her far away from him. But she kisses him anyway, till his tongue is far too occupied with hers to speak. She loses herself in his rhythm, focused on the few strands of his hair that sway from one side of his face to the other. In this moment, she is neither here nor there, lost in a drunken haze and floating somewhere inside her own mind. She's free of everything except the building pressure in her gut, the need for release. And when it comes, when they are nothing but hot breaths into each other's faces and eyes struggling to focus on the world still in front of them, she's numb again.

She slips into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she hears him leave the room and head downstairs, she turns on the shower and sits on the bathtub floor. She lets the scalding water run against her skin because it's better than screaming or slamming her palm against the wall. She lets the water run until it turns cold, which means Warren's turned on the dishwasher. She stumbles out and pulls on whatever clothes are lying nearby on the floor. His shirt. Her pants. Underwear she's not entirely sure is clean. She can't remember the last time she's done the laundry. The hamper in the corner is overflowing and she frowns as she notices that most of it is Warren's clothes.

Warren is an early bird, always rising at five a.m., no matter the day. It used to drive her crazy, but these days, she just pulls the covers over her head and pretends he's gone until she can't pretend any longer.

When she heads downstairs, he's cooking bacon and eggs. The pile of dishes that had lined the counters are gone, as is the mass of Chinese takeout boxes and beer bottles leftover from dinner. "I wish you wouldn't clean my place," she mutters.

He doesn't acknowledge her words. "Coffee?" he asks instead, pointing vaguely to the coffee maker behind him.

She doesn't acknowledge his words either. Instead she grabs a can of Coke from the fridge and opens it pointedly in his direction.

He flinches as the spray of soda hits him, but brushes it aside wordlessly. He smiles faintly as he hands her a plate and when she ignores this as well, he pushes it gently against her chest. "Max," he scolds, but even this is too much for her.

"You don't have to cook me breakfast every time you come over," she tells him, as she has for probably the hundredth time.

"But I want to," is his only rebuttal and he collapses into his usual spot at the table, which, she notices, he's cleaned as well.

"Sometimes we could just go out to eat. Or sometimes you could just go home, you know, enjoy your own space."

He tilts his head at her words and when he stares at her plate, she takes a couple of bites to keep him silent. But of course, Warren is never silent. "Do you want me to leave?"

 _Yes_ , she thinks, but it's too blunt, too abrupt, and she could never do that to him.

At twenty-five, she has spent the majority of her adult life fleeting from one place to another. She hates the permanence of houses and has rented a slew of apartments by a month-to-month basis. She switches jobs and leaves the moment things started to feel too routine, too boring. She knows she's chasing after Chloe and while she wishes they'd stayed more in touch over the years, she would never admit how much she misses her. The couple of weeks they'd spent while she was at Blackwell rebuilding their friendship, reconstructing it to something deeper with Rachel, wasn't something she could forget easily. And then Chloe and Rachel were off to California, and Max, ever the third wheel, was not invited because she had a _future._ She had grades to raise, a scholarship to push through, people rooting for her.

 _Let me come,_ she'd begged but Chloe and Rachel were rooting for her and besides, she could always come visit whenever she wanted. But they never stayed in one place for too long.

She was tired of people rooting for her.

She finished school, but college was too heavy a topic to think of. She told her parents she wanted to travel for a year, but then another year had passed, and another, and now she was twenty-five with a fear of committing to anything longer than a month.

And when Chloe had called to say she was back in Arcadia Bay and did she want to visit, she packed up her car and left without a second thought.

The moment of clicking back into place with something that had been broken for so long was a relief. It was harmony in her footsteps between her best friends, arms linked around each other in laughter. But the moments Chloe and Rachel snuck off to steal kisses in the darkness of an empty room, to brush a stray hair away from a face, to press absent fingers against a palm, brought the familiar jealousy to a raging peak inside Max's chest.

And when she bumped into Warren at the Two Whales, an assistant science teacher at the local middle school and still as dorky as he'd been then, she let herself get wrapped in his awkward charm just for the sake of the distraction.

And now, two months into this chaos, she still has no idea of what she's doing. She likes the way his eyes follow her as soon as she enters a room, the way he smiles when she has nothing to say but a shrug. She likes the easy way she falls into him, how she doesn't have to try much to make him happy. She likes his lazy kisses, the way he hums when she lays her head against his chest.

She does not like the way his hand grasps hers every time he thinks she's upset, which is too often, apparently. She does not like how he pushes and pushes against her, even when there's no bed beneath them, as if by being close enough, he can get her to spill all her thoughts. She does not like that as she is getting ready to head to work, it's his socks that she's wearing, too big and folded over far too many times for her comfort.

"Well, I have to leave," she finally tells him and though he doesn't always catch a hint, he does this time, washing their plates beforehand whether she protests or not.

He presses a lingering kiss against the crease between her eyebrows and she hates that it softens at his touch and that he knows this. "I'll call you later," he tells her and when she follows him out and locks the door, she turns her phone off. It will grant her a few hours of silence, at the very least.

She has the most boring and mundane job she can obtain and spends the majority of her day filing paperwork for insurance claims. Her coworkers tune themselves out with the music in their phones, their cubicles like walls that separate them entirely from one another. No one speaks. No one laughs. Sometimes she feels like coughing into the silence will cause an avalanche of paperwork to fall off of her desk and drown her. She wonders why everything isn't in the computer already, digitized and not stacked in terrifying towers in front of her. She thinks her boss had already told her the answer to this once or twice.

But this is exactly how she likes her jobs—simple things she has no regrets leaving in a month or two, something that keeps her busy only until she starts seeking something new. She's only slightly panicked that by month two in Arcadia Bay, she doesn't really feel the need to relocate.

She clocks out exactly when the hour hits five, starts to head home, then turns off to Chloe's instead. It's a small house, rented and busted in, but it feels strangely more permanent than the tiny apartment that Max has rented near the outskirts of their town.

"Hey," Chloe greets and holds the door open for her. Rachel is lounging on their second-hand sofa, whose green and red plaid is horribly out of place with the pastel yellow walls. She offers Max a wave and closes her eyes as she nestles against the cushion beneath her.

"We're ordering pizza. Want in?" Chloe asks and shoves aside a pile of dirty clothes from an armchair for Max.

It's tempting. She thinks of asking if she can stay the night or even crash for a few more hours but then she remembers her own pile of laundry at home and how she has nothing to wear to work tomorrow. She could recycle another outfit from the floor, but she'd already done that for three days now. "No," she sighs but collapses into the armchair anyway.

"Is Warren cooking dinner?" Chloe asks and her eyes are sparkling with mischief.

"I fucking hope not." Max drops her face into her hands but she can still hear Chloe scoff jokingly next to her.

"Just tell him to fuck off then," she laughs and not for the first time, Max feels a surge of anger at her best friend, who doesn't understand what it's like to sleep in an empty bed.

"Can I have that?" Max gestures to the unopened beer to Chloe's side and she hands it to her.

"Take the rest of the case if you want." Chloe's eyes meet hers and the smile dies from her face. "Just don't open them till you get home."

"I'm not a dumbass," she mutters but Chloe rolls her eyes and shoves Rachel's feet aside so she can sit down.

"When did you start drinking beer, anyway?" Chloe muses.

"After Warren." And that was all the answer they needed.

"Hey," Chloe stops her as she's leaving. "Feel free to come back if you run out. Or if there's nothing good on TV." She turns to smile at Rachel, who's sound asleep on the sofa. "I hate quiet houses."

 _If you tell Warren no,_ is what she means. Max can't remember the last time she told him no.

Maybe Chloe understands after all.

At home, she's already on her third beer by the time she remembers her phone is off. She's also dived into the bottle of vodka she keeps stashed under her kitchen sink. She turns it on and is rewarded with five text messages and three missed calls. She knows she should call him back, but she sets her phone aside and lies down on her sofa, letting the alcohol swirl the thoughts in her mind apart and away.

It doesn't matter because he calls her anyway and she slaps the phone against her ear without opening her eyes.

 _"What's wrong with your phone?"_ Warren's voice greets her and she sighs in response.

"It was off," she tells him and the words feel far too weighted in her mouth.

 _"Are you drunk?"_ he says after a beat of silence. _"I'm coming over."_

"We were drunk. Yesterday." The words break apart before she can form the sentence. "You didn't have. A problem then."

 _"You've been drinking almost every day this week."_

"Shuddupwarren." She tries too hard to get the words right and now they slur together. But it doesn't matter because he's already hung up. She shouldn't have answered the phone to begin with.

"Max."

She opens her eyes to find someone rolling her over and then warm arms embracing her.

"Let's get you in bed."

"I'm fine here," she protests but he carries her upstairs anyway. The warmth of her bed is too tempting to fight him. And when she feels the dip of the bed as he lies next to her, she just snuggles into his side, sliding her hands inside his shirt and placing them on the heat of his chest. "Mmm, fine here, too," she mumbles.

He kisses the top of her head and she raises her face to capture his lips. He lets her, hesitantly. He's always hesitant, as if his body operates a second after his mind does and the delay always makes her question herself.

"Hey," he begins, breaking away. She mutters in protest. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

"Don't," she sighs. Her eyes are still closed, but she reaches a hand towards his face, the crinkled brows and narrowed eyes, and pats him awkwardly on the forehead. "Don't start, please. Not tonight."

"Max." He pulls her hand away but keeps it captive in his own and she's too far gone to care anymore. She feels his lips in her hair again and they travel down, barely tracing a line towards her mouth, where he seeks his answers there, his uncertainty giving way to hunger. She feels his teeth crash against her own as he nudges her lips open and tangles his hands in her hair, angling her face to reach her easier.

This is the way it starts—like the bang of a door being slammed open, their bodies pressed so tightly together that she can't breathe. He pushes and she pushes back, hands scrambling for leverage on whatever body part they grasp.

This is the way she likes it—the sheets tangled around their legs, their legs tangled around each other. Her head is cloudy and the world spins and if she closes her eyes, she can't tell up from down anymore. She bites at the flesh near his collarbone and he rewards her by tracing his tongue across her jawbone. She is fire and constant movement and he struggles to keep up, but he doesn't protest. He never does. He pushes and she pushes back, challenging him to back away. But he grasps her hips and pushes further and she lets him as long as he doesn't stop.

This is the way it ends—her face buried under her hair, her hair buried under the pillow. He trails his fingers up her legs, gentle strokes as if he's memorizing her body. He pulls the pillow back and cups her face, kissing all of the freckles he can reach. She is mostly asleep and too tired to care so she sighs into his hands.

And this is what she hates—the silence that fills the room, his words replaced by his touch that is much too gentle. There's a heaviness in this silence and she holds her breath until his own breathing slows and gives way to light snores. And then it's finally safe to fall asleep herself.

When she wakes up, she finds that the clothing hamper is gone and she panics as she realizes she's forgotten to do the laundry again. She takes a quick shower and wraps a towel around herself, racing down the stairs to find Warren sorting through the clothes in the laundry room.

"Oh," she says as he sets one of her bras aside.

"Before you say it, I need to wash my clothes, too. Most of them are, uh, here, apparently." He shrugs an apology but continues to drop clothes into the washing machine. He finally seems to notice the towel she's wearing and gestures to the dryer next to him. "Should be some nearly ready in there."

"Warren," she warns but he pops open the dryer, grabs one of his shirts that he exchanges for the dirty one he's wearing, and places a quick kiss to the top of her head.

"I'm gone. I'll come by later if you'd like." And then he is gone, leaving her to fish through the clothes in the dryer for something presentable to wear.

He didn't cook breakfast.

Max tries calling him during her lunch break but his phone just rings and rings. She knows he usually spends his lunch hour grading papers but she frowns at her phone anyway. After work, she, Chloe, and Rachel decide to explore one of the nearby towns and find a strange little flea market.

"Hey, look at this," Rachel calls from several aisles behind them. It's an old chemistry set that looks as if it had come from the eighties.

"Wow, retro," Chloe says, laughing, and Max rolls her eyes as she toys with one of the metal bars.

"Chloe, we're in a damn flea market. Everything's retro."

"Pfft. You're in a lovely mood." Chloe turns towards a battered trumpet and twirls it in her hands.

"You should get that for Warren," Rachel advises then yanks the trumpet out of Chloe's hands. "Don't put that in your mouth."

"Well, how else are you gonna find out if it works?"

"That thing will probably give you herpes."

"That's not how herpes works."

Max scoops the set awkwardly into her arms. "I'm going to get it," she proclaims and Rachel and Chloe give her identical confused smiles.

"Well, yeah, that's what I said," Rachel replies as Chloe plops something that looks like a dead fox onto her head. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Please tell me you did not just put a dead animal on my head." When Chloe doesn't remove it, she yanks it off her head and shudders.

"Wow, and you didn't even scream. I'm impressed," Chloe says, laughing.

"It's like I'm with a teenager. It's like you can't grow up," Rachel whines and Max is already at the cash register.

When she heads home, she places the chemistry set on her coffee table. Warren doesn't call her that night. She tries calling him before she heads to bed, just to tell him about the chemistry set, but this time it goes straight to voicemail.

"Maybe he turned it off," she muses, but she frowns down at her phone all the same. She tosses and turns in the bed, counting the spackle clusters on her ceiling in the glow of the moonlight from her window. She lifts her index finger and connects the spots, making her own constellations. Her finger has long grown tired by the time she falls asleep.

She grabs breakfast at the diner and nearly crashes into Warren. He holds his coffee over Max's head so it doesn't spill.

"Oh, hey," she greets, stepping backwards.

"Morning," he says, but his smile is faint.

"I, uh, tried calling you yesterday. I found something you'd like at this flea market."

"Oh?" He sips his coffee and his eyes dart towards the door. "Sorry. I was up to my nose in papers yesterday. Haven't even put a dent in the pile, actually." He laughs, but it sounds forced. "What if I drop by tomorrow?"

"Oh," she echoes and steps backwards again. "Yeah, I guess. Your clothes are still at my place, too."

"Well, I can get them then, too." He glances at the door again and this time heads towards it. "I really need to run. I'll see you tomorrow." He's gone before she can even wave and she frowns at the empty space he'd been a moment ago.

"What's that look for?" Joyce calls from behind the counter and Max turns to find her smiling wryly. "Didn't you want him to back off a little?"

"Yeah, I just didn't expect it so suddenly," Max mutters and Joyce hands her the box with her pancakes inside.

"Be careful what you wish for, darlin'."

"No, I'm just surprised is all," Max answers but Joyce has already turned back into the kitchen.

Max doesn't finish her pancakes. Instead, she swirls them around her fork before setting the box aside and trying to work her way through her mountain of paperwork. Her hand twitches every time she hears a phone bleep or chirp but her own phone stares back silently at her. Not even a text from Chloe with a picture of the faux animal hat she'd bought at the flea market.

She thinks of driving to the school and almost does it, her toe tapping the brake only several times before she finally chickens out and heads back home.

The walls of her apartment seem to close in on her when she's alone. There are too many creaks and groans and each one has a story that Max doesn't want to hear. She's bought another bottle of vodka and she's already halfway through, and fifteen episodes through Friends before her bleary eyes give up on her. She pulls her jacket over her and tries to race sleep again, this time by counting the letters on the vodka label. She's at fifty before she loses track and at ten again before she's dreaming of working endless tables at Central Perk, waiting for Warren to show up, but he never does.

When she wakes up, she tosses the jacket over the chemistry set and pretends it doesn't exist.

She doesn't eat breakfast.

She doesn't wash the laundry.

Warren doesn't call.

She wears his t-shirt to bed, trying not to bury her face into the fabric because it definitely doesn't smell like him or feel like him or even slightly remind her of him. It's just convenient and warm and her bed has never felt so lonely. She presses her hand against the headboard and traces the pattern he'd carved into it a couple of months ago, a small crooked rose. She traces it over and over, closing her eyes and imagining herself swirling along the pattern. Movement just to keep from being still. She hates being still.

She needs to go grocery shopping. Her trash can is starting to smell as if a dead animal is rotting inside. She's missed work for two days now and when her car breaks down, she walks the rest of the way to Chloe's house. All four miles.

"Whoa, dude. You look like you ran a marathon," Chloe informs her and Max feels as if she'll collapse on her front porch.

"Can I borrow your car? I had to leave mine on the side of the highway because it broke down."

"Why didn't you call triple A or something?" Chloe says, backing up to let her in.

"I can't find my phone," she admits, which is partially true. She thinks she might have tossed it into her trash can while she was raging the other night. She might have also been drunk. She can't remember if she'd taken out the trash since then.

"They probably towed your car, then," Chloe warns and she just nods. "Besides Rach took the car to work today. Are you running late to work?"

"I need groceries," Max says, because while it's not the answer Chloe wanted, it's the one she can give.

"So how much of that exhaustion is from walking and how much is from lack of sleep?" Chloe asks instead, leaning closer to examine Max's face.

Max leans back and wipes the sweat from her eye. "I'm sleeping," she answers.

"Enough?"

That she doesn't answer.

Chloe hands her her phone, her mouth set in a firm line. "Call Warren. He gets off around this time anyway, right?"

"He won't," Max says, collapsing on the sofa. She twirls the phone in her hand. She's tried calling him herself, a few times at least, but it always either rings until voicemail picks up or just patches her straight to it. He's obviously done playing her game.

But she dials anyway, and of course he picks up, because it's not Max's number. When she offers a somber greeting, he doesn't try to hide his surprise.

"I'm sorry, but could I have a ride? My car broke down, I can't find my phone, and my fridge is growing a colony of fungi instead of housing food."

"Max," he scolds because it's her fault that she's let it go this long, her fault that she let him clean after her for two months, her fault that she can't get it together. But that isn't what he says. "I'll be there in a few," is what he says instead.

"You don't have to come inside with me," she says when he picks her up and he doesn't answer.

"You don't have to push the cart," she says when they walk into the grocery store and he pushes it anyway.

"I'm sorry," she says as he's trying to juggle four of her bags plus a giant watermelon to his car.

"Max," he finally chastises, trying not to smash the watermelon as he drops it into his trunk. "An apology won't mean anything if you can't even tell me what you're apologizing for."

So she takes a breath, trying not to break down in the goddamn parking lot, and focuses on the tiny nucleus bobble on Warren's antenna instead. "This is pretty pathetic, isn't it?"

He scoffs and looks down, but it's obvious that he agrees.

"Can you give me an opening line, at least? So I know what I'm working with?"

"Max," he sighs and she wonders if there will ever come a time where he isn't scolding her like a school child. "You know how I feel about you. I don't think I could make it any more clear."

Now it's her turn to scoff. "Maybe I just want to hear you say it," she tries because she's not so sure she's ready to admit her own feelings. She's not so sure that all her late nights stalking her phone and sleeping in his shirt is something she wants to dissect right here in the open.

"Why?" he asks and there's a war in his eyes that makes her stumble backwards. "So you can yell at me about cooking breakfast? Making sure you don't have to clear a pathway of trash in your kitchen? Having something to wear that hasn't been soaking in whatever funk your laundry pile seems to generate? I mean, you can hire a maid and yell at them if you want."

"No, Warren, I—"

"Or is it because you just want to have someone to sleep with every night? Your own personal stuffed animal or fuck toy or whatever. Come on, Max. After all the shit we've been through, is that all you want us to be? Because I don't think I can do it anymore. I don't think I could stand to tell you I love you just so you can shoo me away the next morning and then turn your damn phone off so you don't have to put up with me for the rest of the day. I can't be your fixing point, the thing that holds you together. I just can't do it anymore."

Max slumps against the car, not even feeling herself slide until the pavement is under her. "I know," she says. "I can't either."

"So what do we do?" He collapses next to her.

"Well, we could just give up. Give each other space like we've been doing." _Even if has been one-sided._

The defeat in his eyes is too much and she focuses on her shoes instead. She's become so well-versed in studying inanimate objects that she wonders if this is another thing she should dissect.

"If that's what you want." He sounds deflated, as if all of his fight has been put into that one phrase.

"No. It's not actually." She knocks her knee against his, catching his gaze. "Or I can get my shit together. We could start over, maybe. Try a real date. Maybe have you kick my ass at the pinball arcade near the boardwalk."

He gapes at her, as if he's waiting for the punchline, and when she doesn't offer one, he just continues to stare, open-mouthed and graceful.

"Hello, stranger," she greets, holding out her hand. "I'm Max Caulfield, professional wanderluster and unintentional heartbreaker."

His jaw snaps closed and he smiles, taking her hand in his and giving it a brief shake. "Hi, Max Caulfield. I'm Warren Graham, assistant science teacher and professional dork."

"I think those are basically the same thing," she says, wrinkling her nose, and he rolls his eyes.

"Would you like to accompany me to the pinball arcade this weekend?" He waggles his eyebrows for extra effort.

"Wow, you move fast. Not even a shot at small talk or mentioning my amazing cerulean eyes."

"Sounds like you already know they're amazing, so it's a win-win."

"Lame." She holds out a hand for him to help her up.

He pulls her towards him instead. "Are you sure?" he asks, his words a breath away from her lips.

"Am I ever sure about anything?" she tries but he shakes his head; this isn't the answer he wants. Nor is it the one he deserves.

"Yes," she confesses and he closes the inches between them, capturing her lips with his own. His touch is butterfly light and he doesn't give in when she tries to deepen the kiss.

Instead, he pulls away, whispering "patience" against her smile. "Let's take it slow this time."

And she lets him, this boy who's not a boy anymore. She lets his lips skim past hers, tracing the angle of her jaw, her cheek, as if he's never touched her before. She lets his hands ghost along her sides, holding her, caressing her, his drawn-out movements as if they have all the time in the world.

And he lets her press her forehead against his, their eyelashes brushing against each other as she angles her face for another kiss. He lets her tangle her arms around his neck as his wrap around her waist and here, in a noisy parking lot that reeks of fish and rotting strawberries, she doesn't care if they are the only people that exist. They are in a fixed state, unyielding.

Until something gives.

There is change on the horizon and for the first time in a long time, Max thinks she's okay with watching it unfold.


End file.
